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"stillborn" poems
These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis. They grew their toes and fingers well enough, Their little foreheads bulged with concentration. If they missed out on walking about like people It wasn't for any lack of mother-love. O I cannot explain what happened to them! They are proper in shape and number and every part. They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid! They smile and smile and smile at me. And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start. They are not pigs, they are not even fish, Though they have a piggy and a fishy air -- It would be better if they were alive, and that's what they were. But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction, And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her.
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43.1k
Stillborn
I’ve finally stopped writing unrequited letters; there were too many wasted breaths left unsent Lapsing intentions befallen on timeworn tawny crumpled  pages; aging like spent flowers in fading earth tones and rumpled paper regrets Multi-hued words uttered— mummers of voiceless exhalations spoken without a sound; indelible spilled ink left behind, lays fallow for so long A love once new,  and a growing silent ache— a hungry heart left for dead—Déjà vu We leave a lot behind, fallen leaves in unspoken ink a restless soul laid bare by a passing moment's random gust; atrophied like unwritten poetry stifled stillborn in a wadded up paper lament jesse stillwater ... July 2018
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Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 11:28 AM UTC
crumpled pages
Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free. Like a worm on a hook, like a knight from some old fashioned book I have saved all my ribbons for thee. If I, if I have been unkind, I hope that you can just let it go by. If I, if I have been untrue I hope you know it was never to you. Like a baby, stillborn, like a beast with his horn I have torn everyone who reached out for me. But I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong I will make it all up to thee. I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch, he said to me, "You must not ask for so much." And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door, she cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?" Oh like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free.
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11.4k
Bird On The Wire
You're my stillborn butterfly afraid of your new beauty with limp wings, pried from the safety of your cocoon by my old hands in a forest where everything is charred. Only the skeletal trees once lush with life and birdsong can admire your strange elegance as you lay listless on their roots that thirst for a storm of passing love and thunder. I want to carry you away to my field of wildflowers and resurrect you with the unmasked glow of the shy moon, who only shows its face in this meadow of lies. I'll watch the breeze wake you on my fingertips then let you fly away, carelessly into a world of color I'll never compare to.
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Jan 3, 2015
Jan 3, 2015 at 5:57 PM UTC
My Field of Wildflowers
we lay together, 6:00am, body warmth touch-sharing, as the June morning summer chill coming off its night nadir coolness surrenders very reluctantly, full length pajamas, blankets and coverlets in use, keeping cold out while bodies touching generate heat - a big difference through these layers of cotton controversy, my right arm, my cunning, falls awkwardly upon her, advising I am woken and aware she is as well, hear her earbuds emplaced, make shushed whispering noises re the future of artificial intelligence and other such mental knottings my awkward angled arm rests on her landscaped outline of shape, coming to rest where legs meet at the top of an upside down V spot, which makes no request, but accepts my bequest of steady stroking of her ****** as an unnecessary but atheist-acceptable to her morning prayer ritual, kept at the intersection of the physical and physics theorems funny how some prayers, where recitation comes thoughtlessly and routine, uttered without any contemplation are yet deep comforting for their inherency, so I pray a stroking repetitive on her body, well hid neath a summer coverlet, wordlessly chanted, wordlessly accepted, silence connoting approving permission I comfort her, above and through a floral coverlet for her floral coverlet, till the sun rises enough to truly warm up our plot, my praying reaches the end of its rope, where quality and quantity achieve unanimity resolution no longer needed, but am appreciated, besides my arm is cramping, not designed for the rising, unleveled angle of her breathing bodice my comfort is her extra comforter, an offering of coffee my reward, for my daily work has begun, and I have many more poems stillborn that require coaxing stroking to become witnesses to living
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Jun 17, 2019
Jun 17, 2019 at 7:32 PM UTC
I comfort her ****** a coaxing
we lay together, 6:00am, body warmth touch-sharing, as the June morning summer chill coming off its night nadir coolness surrenders very reluctantly, full length pajamas, blankets and coverlets in use, keeping cold out while bodies touching generate heat - a big difference through these layers of cotton controversy, my right arm, my cunning, falls awkwardly upon her, advising I am woken and aware she is as well, hear her earbuds emplaced, make shushed whispering noises re the future of artificial intelligence and other such mental knottings my awkward angled arm rests on her landscaped outline of shape, coming to rest where legs meet at the top of an upside down V spot, which makes no request, but accepts my bequest of steady stroking of her ****** as an unnecessary but atheist-acceptable to her morning prayer ritual, kept at the intersection of the physical and physics theorems funny how some prayers, where recitation comes thoughtlessly and routine, uttered without any contemplation are yet deep comforting for their inherency, so I pray a stroking repetitive on her body, well hid neath a summer coverlet, wordlessly chanted, wordlessly accepted, silence connoting approving permission I comfort her, above and through a floral coverlet for her floral coverlet, till the sun rises enough to truly warm up our plot, my praying reaches the end of its rope, where quality and quantity achieve unanimity resolution no longer needed, but am appreciated, besides my arm is cramping, not designed for the rising, unleveled angle of her breathing bodice my comfort is her extra comforter, an offering of coffee my reward, for my daily work has begun, and I have many more poems stillborn that require coaxing stroking to become witnesses to living
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40
Selene. By the sea, I have been staring, at your bright colours change. Erythematous, murderous intentions of a disease disseminating on your surface. The slow, penetrating anguish tearing the guts, a one-sided, disdained, newborn sadness, I am welcoming in my arms. On the operating theatre of life white and now dead moths, stillborn butterflies inside the flesh removed, drowned themselves in a pool of blood. They, an absurd joy that never stood a chance inside this cyanide prison. Portals of loaned, disillusioned happiness closed. The liquid that raced turbulently through my vessels, drained on a half-filled with tears palette. With menacing, impasto knife-like strokes on the body Morpheus painted the shadow-covered moon with memories that refuse to be forgotten from purulent, open wounds. 'Those worlds you will (never) see. The people you will (never) meet' he said. Soul chemicals eroding the behemoth sky, as the paint dries out. Ashes of my Dreams (Not) Achieved, astral remains; everything I silently kept inside.
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Jul 28, 2018
Jul 28, 2018 at 11:31 PM UTC
(D)isseminated (I)ntravascular (C)oagulation
(and I cannot live from with-out) <> a poem in appreciation to Rossella Di Paolo <> I, too:           - am an embryonic work in progress, well into my seventh decade, with no ending in sight                                 I too,     live in the house of poetry, the address likely differs, but suspect the innards of the houses differs little, the decor,  quite similar          - my house shrewdly requests a rethinking,                                     noting, it lives my artifice, with in & with out Then, we are a We:                                              - my cavities house her, She, Poetry is of Ruth (1) born,           - Poetry, She, reminds me, ”whither thou goest, I will go” This duality:           - where the haunting of words providential,              emanate, both inhabiting & inhibits my breathing               She, a fearsome creature, a fearful-something, for it tears me and shreds tears its demands be wrung from with in to with out She, Poetry:           - leaves me gaping, hollow, fills me with             depressurizing boreholes exposed to the elements  of             externalities of an admixed atmospheres, that nature demands             be refilled, fresh in, stale out, for which the artifice trick is knowing which is which when Poetry’s  birthing:           - chest pounds, heart-rate beats heavy metal,             abdomen contracts, there then, no languid in my language,             no help untangling the alpha-bet jumbling,             product of the screams of pushing, squeezing it forth* *you’re hoping to quick-catch newly formed combinations, for if you fail, a poem noisily crashes to and through the floorboard cracks, where poetry’s chaotic glinting etes maliciously glimmer~winks at me with a sarcastic thank you* *“ah, too bad, another creation stillborn, gone to rest, biting the nether dust, without hope of resuscitation…”* just another unfinished work in progress periodically a survivor clean caught, transcribed, edited to be finished, amniotic fluids cleared, poem resurrected blessed with eternal life, readied to be shared and delivered, affirmed and you say to no one and to everyone: this poem will be our poem, wither it goes, ascending, descending, all live in the house of poets, one house, many apartments, each poem a god, and my God will be our God, your God, my God, in the House of Poetry
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Jun 21, 2023
Jun 21, 2023 at 5:55 PM UTC
I, too: Live with-in the House of Poetry
(and I cannot live from with-out) <> a poem in appreciation to Rossella Di Paolo <> I, too:           - am an embryonic work in progress, well into my seventh decade, with no ending in sight                                 I too,     live in the house of poetry, the address likely differs, but suspect the innards of the houses differs little, the decor,  quite similar          - my house shrewdly requests a rethinking,                                     noting, it lives my artifice, with in & with out Then, we are a We:                                              - my cavities house her, She, Poetry is of Ruth (1) born,           - Poetry, She, reminds me, ”whither thou goest, I will go” This duality:           - where the haunting of words providential,              emanate, both inhabiting & inhibits my breathing               She, a fearsome creature, a fearful-something, for it tears me and shreds tears its demands be wrung from with in to with out She, Poetry:           - leaves me gaping, hollow, fills me with             depressurizing boreholes exposed to the elements  of             externalities of an admixed atmospheres, that nature demands             be refilled, fresh in, stale out, for which the artifice trick is knowing which is which when Poetry’s  birthing:           - chest pounds, heart-rate beats heavy metal,             abdomen contracts, there then, no languid in my language,             no help untangling the alpha-bet jumbling,             product of the screams of pushing, squeezing it forth* *you’re hoping to quick-catch newly formed combinations, for if you fail, a poem noisily crashes to and through the floorboard cracks, where poetry’s chaotic glinting etes maliciously glimmer~winks at me with a sarcastic thank you* *“ah, too bad, another creation stillborn, gone to rest, biting the nether dust, without hope of resuscitation…”* just another unfinished work in progress periodically a survivor clean caught, transcribed, edited to be finished, amniotic fluids cleared, poem resurrected blessed with eternal life, readied to be shared and delivered, affirmed and you say to no one and to everyone: this poem will be our poem, wither it goes, ascending, descending, all live in the house of poets, one house, many apartments, each poem a god, and my God will be our God, your God, my God, in the House of Poetry
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63
Retail-hunter gatherers pick clean processed bones, digging graves with their shiny teeth, studious in their reveries as they drone past worlds dumped in the thresher; the trucked-in fields of film-wrapped gore splayed lustily before the managers wound tight in Machiavellian design. A shepherd herds his flock of wreathed iron back to its pen, its skeletal tangle lit in riotous gold by swords flung from lambent eyes of pre-dawn’s shunting chariots Cages shunt and bobble like tugboats chugging stoic up swimming pool lanes of nondescript tile, cheered on by shouting colours to float through archipelagos of paper towel and chocolate blocks past the vegemite diaspora, and the arctic wastelands cased in sliding glass fields of perfect steady storms as wraiths baked in halogen ask silent questions of the silverbeet, while Lana Del Ray’s voice falls like nightshade—slutty and serene—coating shelf stackers in a Piaf sadness as the shelves reach their arms out for more. The check out chick hatches a sense of déjà vu as carrots and biscuits drone towards her mind berEFT of any twitching sense of POSsibility that wised up and flew this leering coop and deep in her catalogue of grey folds something stillborn and waxen is perched on gleaming steel, reeling out her guts like cassette tape with jerky nightmare arms and laughing like a banker watching ***** films, mornings dull cerise an invocation through auto-jaws as she bursts out to warble with magpies in car park’s climbing fire.
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Jul 25, 2013
Jul 25, 2013 at 9:23 PM UTC
supermarket
Retail-hunter gatherers pick clean processed bones, digging graves with their shiny teeth, studious in their reveries as they drone past worlds dumped in the thresher; the trucked-in fields of film-wrapped gore splayed lustily before the managers wound tight in Machiavellian design. A shepherd herds his flock of wreathed iron back to its pen, its skeletal tangle lit in riotous gold by swords flung from lambent eyes of pre-dawn’s shunting chariots Cages shunt and bobble like tugboats chugging stoic up swimming pool lanes of nondescript tile, cheered on by shouting colours to float through archipelagos of paper towel and chocolate blocks past the vegemite diaspora, and the arctic wastelands cased in sliding glass fields of perfect steady storms as wraiths baked in halogen ask silent questions of the silverbeet, while Lana Del Ray’s voice falls like nightshade—slutty and serene—coating shelf stackers in a Piaf sadness as the shelves reach their arms out for more. The check out chick hatches a sense of déjà vu as carrots and biscuits drone towards her mind berEFT of any twitching sense of POSsibility that wised up and flew this leering coop and deep in her catalogue of grey folds something stillborn and waxen is perched on gleaming steel, reeling out her guts like cassette tape with jerky nightmare arms and laughing like a banker watching ***** films, mornings dull cerise an invocation through auto-jaws as she bursts out to warble with magpies in car park’s climbing fire.
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41
I am the barbed thorn the serrated reward facing savage cruel winter; sedition in transmission. I am the only pawn on your chequered board facing a feisty queen; of restricting submission. I am the demonic exon a heraldic discord facing bleak futures; an inherent disposition. I am the stillborn reborn the aberration restored facing anomalies instability; violation on a mission. I am broken and worn a fallen sword facing a grim battle; outnumbered by division. I am the brass horn the out of tune chord facing orchestral expulsion; a musician in remission. I am history's forewarn the contrite accord ignored facing penitent absolution; clemency in transition.
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Jun 22, 2014
Jun 22, 2014 at 10:32 PM UTC
Demonic Exon
veracity, faulty. it's hard to tell who your friends are at the bottom of the ocean. sand grains. black, white. everyone is blind. jellyfish are wolfish at the bottom of the ocean. spoken sounds sting. starfish are spearfish- one might hear a feather drop, one might hear a pin drop, noiseless word string. beneath; sky, rise up. the bottle forlorn. willowy hair will stay strong, while the luminous go on stillborn.
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Dec 2, 2012
Dec 2, 2012 at 10:48 PM UTC
in regards to my infidelity
The hour which might have been yet might not be, Which man’s and woman’s heart conceived and bore Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore Bides it the breaking of Time’s weary sea? Bondchild of all consummate joys set free, It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before The house of Love, hears through the echoing door His hours elect in choral consonancy. But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand Together tread at last the immortal strand With eyes where burning memory lights love home? Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned And leaped to them and in their faces yearned: — ‘I am your child: O parents, ye have come!’
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4k
Stillborn Love
Lazily, a boy with silvery hairs muttering requiem aeternam lifts his neck at the piercing radiance skimming off the eyeglasses rim, and there looms the glory, the spotless sea of blue, varnishes of spring gloss fuming out of the French coronation robe. The still-brisk branches hung bent at the weight of vivacity, sight of maidens whose eyes and grace bath in the full warmth of light, the kisses on the face of the river by the shower of half-bloomed petals, just as the stillborn thrills of the beating heart to the splintered fingers of Moirae. The time of adieu, the season of life. The mourning procession amidst the lustily caressing May breeze. -Primavera, thou name be the sweet irony of the dying flowers The evening wades in, and the coy face of the mountain blushes; Thence strides away the man whose gaze speaks of premature nostalgia Here the wind whispers the rosy delirium from the sakura tree at the far side, the faintness lushly hazed away by the cloudy veil of bittersweet grey.
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Nov 15, 2012
Nov 15, 2012 at 7:13 AM UTC
A Maytide Funeral
After Midnight The narcissists fall After Midnight A new lyric calls After Midnight The bugles will blow After Midnight There’s more left to know After Midnight The lizards collect After Midnight All tales to reflect After Midnight The ticking won’t stop After Midnight The bottom has topped After Midnight A cancerous tome After Midnight Malignancy known After Midnight Betray and deceive After Midnight Alone in the siege After Midnight All footsteps fall deaf After Midnight Last palate uncleft After Midnight New story to front After Midnight A star for the dunce After Midnight The comets rebel After Midnight The coroners yell After Midnight A suit made of steel After Midnight Its melting reveals After Midnight The plain and the slack After Midnight There’s no turning back After Midnight A sacred oath sworn After Midnight All memory forlorn After Midnight The wheels bend and turn After Midnight Lost vision relearns After Midnight False birth is stillborn After Midnight Old vestments are torn After Midnight The here and the now After Midnight That one sacred cow After Midnight Past-Future unseen After Midnight —new eyes that believe (Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2015)
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Feb 27, 2018
Feb 27, 2018 at 12:01 PM UTC
After Midnight
If reached beside the pearly cradled rose therein a rattling joy; o' stillborn child. What uttered mine - unsaid angelic prose, should passing lay my husk and essence wild? Awaiting yonder womb were tepid wings; inflamed with bonding warmth of kinship love, like softly feathered pads and rocking swings then ardent glows, as seen and known above. The wailing babe is music sung and sought, for more a sleepless dusk - had since apart. For eyes which never opened wide were wrought and taken here and strolled in golden cart. Should words in amber fail and infant pine, behold the spectrums soul, the same as mine.
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Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 2:50 PM UTC
The Pearly Cradle (Sonnet)
I pledge allegiance to all the stones in the road that have given me succor, to every poet-of-anywhere who greets me with wetted, parted lips and open heart, who greets the sun-rays shared, inching, opening o'er my yet living, praying body, reminding me that I am alive, that I am warm that I feel poetry in, on, cells, all over, deep in my extremities Most  importantly, in my busted heart, where warmth is stored in a soul restored, and Life affirmed, For who knows how many more times I will know this, How many more times I will able compose this, Play "measure the future'' in seconds or years and grimaced smiles over tears, or just one or the other, that be willed to supersede; Will keep you posted in every realized and many some stillborn poem, rising with the grand entrance of morn skies, or perhaps, lies buried neath in each horizon's cemetarial, and even those, that straddle a confusing and confused moon, of a twenty fours hours existence, be shoulder-borne, bathed in combinatorial equatorial moon & sun light, so we can bathe, like Bathsheba (1) by both, and delight at the exact same moment's portent, no matter, the disregarded, discarded, why we are who we are when pledge and plead allegiance to those eyes that read our scrivenings nml
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Aug 27, 2025
Aug 27, 2025 at 11:57 AM UTC
I pledge Allegiance
Planks, splintering in solidity Together twined in tedium Curving cords of mated metal Lost in ludicrous loops Twines of tetanus protrude Danger danger Rising flying roaring floating Above the stillborn trains Arching acrid aerial arms Lazy concrete spiral, neighbor snail Inverse slide with railings Rumble rumble try and grumble Jitter in jumpy juxtaposition Guts of grotesque giants Flayed flawed under flaming flight Blink away oblivion Orange and omnificent, opaque concern Useful hangnail, table scraps Rise above Shocked stillness soon stumbling Ornamental oasis for the oracles Unseen unheard untasted unsmelled Unfeeling unused to understanding Carry me across Fly me over Lift me beyond Suspend. Glimpse the unparalleled phenomenon Ribs of steel, rain has parted Seeping to the soul Buzzing through the boards Immobile, cradle in the wind Twist Take off your sunglasses Be sure to look around as you pass through
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Oct 20, 2012
Oct 20, 2012 at 10:30 PM UTC
Footbridge over the Railroad Tracks
After Midnight The narcissists fall After Midnight A new lyric calls After Midnight Last bugle to blow After Midnight There’s more left to know After Midnight The lizards collect After Midnight Old tales to reflect After Midnight The ticking will stop After Midnight The bottom will top After Midnight A cancerous tome After Midnight Malignancy known After Midnight Betray and deceive After Midnight Alone in the siege After Midnight All footsteps fall deaf After Midnight Lost palates are cleft After Midnight New story to front After Midnight Two stars for the dunce After Midnight The comets rebel After Midnight The coroners yell After Midnight A suit made of steel After Midnight Its melting reveals After Midnight That voice in the back After Midnight There’s no turning back After Midnight A sacred oath sworn After Midnight All memory forlorn After Midnight The wheels bend and churn After Midnight Lost vision returns After Midnight False birth is stillborn After Midnight Old vestments are torn After Midnight The here and the now After Midnight That one sacred cow After Midnight Past-Future unseen After Midnight —creation redeemed (Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2015)
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Nov 13, 2018
Nov 13, 2018 at 2:55 PM UTC
Creation Redeemed
Keep your nose to the grindstone echo and boom. Tucked in shirt and buttoned blue collars. Coffee, no milk, no sugar. Pagans in a pageant lifting slabs with slack hands. Old muscles knotted and torn a drone sound, stillborn as the childless playground. Mocking and mundane the bell rings and shatters the silence leaving tools on the floor and empty parking spaces. Nothing left but the weep of pigeons in the rafters and the breeze that arrives only after the workers departure.
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Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 6:18 AM UTC
The Grindstone.
A strange kind of intrusive ambiance; voices in several languages, forced laughter, technological functioning; human activity intermarried with machines. The volume rising perfectly in sync with my cortisol levels, I interrogate  my past for signs of the path that led me here; it remains blurred. I did not dream of working in customer service; but here I am regardless, moments of my life that I will never ponder again; a cascade of  the present moment repeating as long as my employment contract exists. An event-less horizon, memories are stillborn here and true ingenuity stifled. There is much and nothing that has led me here. It is hard not to feel like a horse bred for performance in this place; everything is monitored, quantified, reviewed and collaborated. Performance reports produced with the fervor of medieval scholars translating the bible.  I look to the sky, what else is there to do; only to see smoke alarms and aesthetically neutral lighting arrangements. There is art work on the walls, but is generic, created to defy analysis. The colouring of the walls is chosen to exude a neutral sort of trendiness; on brand for the overarching corporate image.
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Sep 13, 2018
Sep 13, 2018 at 7:32 AM UTC
Office
I reach to feel your lips  But the net of night discerns  So I adore your cheek My hand at your side  Strives to pull you in  Like the moon  That drags the waves nearby Your words to me so soft  They rival a subtle breeze  As your eyes unveil the stars  To display them for the first time I want to say, "I love you"  And cut the Heaven's floor  But I know time will not come swift So I will cast my stillborn heart  Until the day we meet again
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May 5, 2016
May 5, 2016 at 11:18 PM UTC
First Date
If laughter is the best medicine then this explains why there are so many unhealthy people. Too many people got the SAD's Condition;                  **It arrives usually within 2-4 weeks of compromising one's inner child after crushing up                        some sparkly dreams and flushing them in the *******                                         Symptoms include:                 *1) A black-hole bitter disposition                  2) Snapping at little things like having to wait 5 in a checkout line                     or making dramatic sighs after repeating a question a few times.                3) Reminiscing about terrible things and never forgiving and letting  go, like having your mom sign your life away to a cult or being told that your dear sweet Aunt who helped raise you kept looking for you in the hospital every time your name was called even though you never saw her because your family thought it best you kept your distance or hearing the morose silence of a stillborn newborn.                 4) Finding your serenity at the bottom of a bar room floor inside a gin bottle.                 5) Finding your solace in a married woman who eats all kinds of colorful shaped pills for breakfast.*                                          And if a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, how much can you add before the medicine loses its flavor? They say truth is bitter, yet I find that hard to believe considering it feels so good to say. It's like a cinnamon peppermint flavor on the tongue with an aftertaste of jalapeno tears. Maybe I'm so used to the processed hydrogenated extra sugar kind that's why I go right for the pure hard stuff, and maybe that's why a laugh so much.   Maybe that's why people consider me a cuckoo fool....
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Dec 25, 2013
Dec 25, 2013 at 4:59 PM UTC
Medicine
If laughter is the best medicine then this explains why there are so many unhealthy people. Too many people got the SAD's Condition;                  **It arrives usually within 2-4 weeks of compromising one's inner child after crushing up                        some sparkly dreams and flushing them in the *******                                         Symptoms include:                 *1) A black-hole bitter disposition                  2) Snapping at little things like having to wait 5 in a checkout line                     or making dramatic sighs after repeating a question a few times.                3) Reminiscing about terrible things and never forgiving and letting  go, like having your mom sign your life away to a cult or being told that your dear sweet Aunt who helped raise you kept looking for you in the hospital every time your name was called even though you never saw her because your family thought it best you kept your distance or hearing the morose silence of a stillborn newborn.                 4) Finding your serenity at the bottom of a bar room floor inside a gin bottle.                 5) Finding your solace in a married woman who eats all kinds of colorful shaped pills for breakfast.*                                          And if a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, how much can you add before the medicine loses its flavor? They say truth is bitter, yet I find that hard to believe considering it feels so good to say. It's like a cinnamon peppermint flavor on the tongue with an aftertaste of jalapeno tears. Maybe I'm so used to the processed hydrogenated extra sugar kind that's why I go right for the pure hard stuff, and maybe that's why a laugh so much.   Maybe that's why people consider me a cuckoo fool....
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31
my psychiatrist tells me i have holes in me. she says it as though it is something i should already know. and when she says it, the shift inside me is something i wish i could compare to the grinding of tectonic plates, if only i were strong enough to bring about an earthquake. but since i am a stranger even to aftershocks, i keep quiet. my earthquake is stillborn, expressed instead as a nod, as a chewing of the lip, as a silent, compliant “mhm.” and the urge that nestles itself at the pit of my stomach is not an urge to disagree; it is an urge to forget. because my psychiatrist tells me i have holes in me. she says it as though it is something i should already know, and she says it in a way that is not meant to make me feel incomplete, but it is a way that still does, and if i can forget this, even for a moment, i can forget that i am not okay. i do not like not being okay; i do not like having problems, and my psychiatrist, she tells me i have holes in me and she says it as though it is a problem. and so begins a slow disintegration: i become but a bearer of problems, a garden growing only weeds — something in need of fixing. i see myself a war-torn landscape, dry and cracked and lacking life. i see myself the kind of ground you step on and say, “remember when things used to grow here? remember when it used to be green?” i am still trying to be green, always trying to be green, but my psychiatrist tells me i have holes in me, and suddenly green becomes a color i will never know how to paint. outside my psychiatrist’s office, on the wall of the waiting room, there is a painting of flowers — irises and a geranium — and the leaves, i know, are supposed to be green, but the paint is old and faded and they don’t look it. and for a moment, i think that maybe, whether iris or geranium or boy riddled with holes, maybe it is possible to bloom even if you are not green. (a.m.)
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Sep 8, 2016
Sep 8, 2016 at 10:50 AM UTC
irises and geranium
my psychiatrist tells me i have holes in me. she says it as though it is something i should already know. and when she says it, the shift inside me is something i wish i could compare to the grinding of tectonic plates, if only i were strong enough to bring about an earthquake. but since i am a stranger even to aftershocks, i keep quiet. my earthquake is stillborn, expressed instead as a nod, as a chewing of the lip, as a silent, compliant “mhm.” and the urge that nestles itself at the pit of my stomach is not an urge to disagree; it is an urge to forget. because my psychiatrist tells me i have holes in me. she says it as though it is something i should already know, and she says it in a way that is not meant to make me feel incomplete, but it is a way that still does, and if i can forget this, even for a moment, i can forget that i am not okay. i do not like not being okay; i do not like having problems, and my psychiatrist, she tells me i have holes in me and she says it as though it is a problem. and so begins a slow disintegration: i become but a bearer of problems, a garden growing only weeds — something in need of fixing. i see myself a war-torn landscape, dry and cracked and lacking life. i see myself the kind of ground you step on and say, “remember when things used to grow here? remember when it used to be green?” i am still trying to be green, always trying to be green, but my psychiatrist tells me i have holes in me, and suddenly green becomes a color i will never know how to paint. outside my psychiatrist’s office, on the wall of the waiting room, there is a painting of flowers — irises and a geranium — and the leaves, i know, are supposed to be green, but the paint is old and faded and they don’t look it. and for a moment, i think that maybe, whether iris or geranium or boy riddled with holes, maybe it is possible to bloom even if you are not green. (a.m.)
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58
Tingly under the daisies; Glassy-eyed, glazed, greasy; Shaking, shivering, shuddering, Wishing, wandering, whimpering, Westernizing— Romanizing— Constitutionalizing— Institutionalizing— Perpetually searching And dying And living, Watching Death survive And scythe the frolickers, The prancers, The rompers, The merrymakers. A rose clamped between his Grinning teeth glistens brightly, And he dances so joyously. “Yes!” say the naysayers, Confused are the soothsayers, Lost are the cartographers. Oh, Utopia! The monks are extravagant; The meditations are a farce! The preachers are beggars And swindlers and chargers, And Machiavelli fulfills his wishes! Babies are stillborn, stabbed, and Ritualistically sacrificed, And their blood is spilled, drunk, Slathered over the ***** man. The evangelists scream and lie: “You are all predestined to die!” Oh, hail Utopia! Wedded are the girls to the girls; Wedded are the boys to the boys; Wedded is Death to Death, Life to Life, And Life to Death. Wedded are the living to the existent. And the milking babes are slaughtered Ceremoniously, Surreptitiously, Ostentatiously. Oh, hail great Utopia! We are all dead and unintelligent: Laugh, laugh, Einstein, at your Stupidity. Laugh, laugh, Temple Grandin at Your retardation. Laugh, laugh, laugh! Look at the sluggard, thou ant; Look at the boy, sobbing wolf; Aesop was drunk, Aristotle was delusional, Michelangelo was blind, Beethoven could hear, Poe was sane. And I can't read. They ramble, I watch. They sleep, I watch. They dream, I watch. They sleep-talk, I watch. They scream, I watch. They choke, I watch. They suffocate, I watch. Stone-faced, I stare; Raspingly, I breathe; Uncontrollably, I twitch; Inwardly, I rage. I hope you die, I hope you die. I hope you bleed, I hope you die. I want you begging and crying, I want you blubbering at my feet, I want you gnashing at my ankles, I want you writhing in pain, I want your arm twisted off, Cracking with the snapping sinews, I want your beating heart in my hands, I want your genitals uprooted and stuffed in your throat, I want your stomach so I can eat the still-digesting food, I want your shrunken head and I want to force my thumbs into your unblinking eyes and I want to tear your face in two and I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die.
0
Nov 3, 2015
Nov 3, 2015 at 9:47 PM UTC
Utopia
Tingly under the daisies; Glassy-eyed, glazed, greasy; Shaking, shivering, shuddering, Wishing, wandering, whimpering, Westernizing— Romanizing— Constitutionalizing— Institutionalizing— Perpetually searching And dying And living, Watching Death survive And scythe the frolickers, The prancers, The rompers, The merrymakers. A rose clamped between his Grinning teeth glistens brightly, And he dances so joyously. “Yes!” say the naysayers, Confused are the soothsayers, Lost are the cartographers. Oh, Utopia! The monks are extravagant; The meditations are a farce! The preachers are beggars And swindlers and chargers, And Machiavelli fulfills his wishes! Babies are stillborn, stabbed, and Ritualistically sacrificed, And their blood is spilled, drunk, Slathered over the ***** man. The evangelists scream and lie: “You are all predestined to die!” Oh, hail Utopia! Wedded are the girls to the girls; Wedded are the boys to the boys; Wedded is Death to Death, Life to Life, And Life to Death. Wedded are the living to the existent. And the milking babes are slaughtered Ceremoniously, Surreptitiously, Ostentatiously. Oh, hail great Utopia! We are all dead and unintelligent: Laugh, laugh, Einstein, at your Stupidity. Laugh, laugh, Temple Grandin at Your retardation. Laugh, laugh, laugh! Look at the sluggard, thou ant; Look at the boy, sobbing wolf; Aesop was drunk, Aristotle was delusional, Michelangelo was blind, Beethoven could hear, Poe was sane. And I can't read. They ramble, I watch. They sleep, I watch. They dream, I watch. They sleep-talk, I watch. They scream, I watch. They choke, I watch. They suffocate, I watch. Stone-faced, I stare; Raspingly, I breathe; Uncontrollably, I twitch; Inwardly, I rage. I hope you die, I hope you die. I hope you bleed, I hope you die. I want you begging and crying, I want you blubbering at my feet, I want you gnashing at my ankles, I want you writhing in pain, I want your arm twisted off, Cracking with the snapping sinews, I want your beating heart in my hands, I want your genitals uprooted and stuffed in your throat, I want your stomach so I can eat the still-digesting food, I want your shrunken head and I want to force my thumbs into your unblinking eyes and I want to tear your face in two and I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die.
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86
He despaired of it, That the only innocence Lay in the stillborn.
0
May 8, 2014
May 8, 2014 at 9:34 AM UTC
9. White
each night in bed wrestling with the moon and my sheets i write poems in my head intellectual one night stands forgotten in the morning just words whispered away in the cool breeze of the AC before i fall asleep these are my favourites the stillborn prose my own dark harvest lingering like a sweet hangover of imploding thoughts they are mine now gone in the dark lost forever in my head
0
Feb 23, 2012
Feb 23, 2012 at 11:19 PM UTC
dark harvest